End of the Long Summer

Video: Author Dianne Dumanoski explains why climate change is ultimately not a crisis for the earth, but a crisis for humans, and why we must find our way "through this thicket of uncertainty."

posted Feb 10, 2010

Dianne Dumanoski, author of The End of the Long Summer: Why We Must Remake Our Civilization to Survive on a Volatile Earth, examines a possible tipping point of climate change—a point reached when individuals take on the societal values that perpetuate environmental destruction.

"This is not, basically, a crisis only for the earth," she says. "This is fundamentally a human crisis. And in the longer run, the earth is going to be fine. This is not about the planet ultimately. Earth has survived all sorts of catastrophes. What's at stake is the stable climate that has allowed for the kind of civilization we have right now."

"It's critical that we do everything possible to avoid the worst," Dumanoski says of economic globalization in its current form, which she sees as "putting ourselves on a giant Titanic."